Autistic Siblings. Help!

If you have an autistic child, current estimations say that you have a one in five chance of having another. To many of us with autistic children, this comes as no surprise, most parents of autistic children I know have second and even third children who are also autistic, others have children who are decidedly quirky, although they may not meet the criteria for a diagnosis.

This often means that plenty of advice, aimed at parenting one autistic child, can be more difficult to implement.

Now we don't have school to manage, our biggest challenge is having two PDA boys together. Individually they are more receptive to the various PDA and ASD strategies that we use, when together it is far more difficult to manage their anxiety and to reach a point where strategies can take any effect.

Neither boy tolerates the other well. I believe this is due to a few things. Sensory overwhelm, as both boys are both hyper and hypo sensitive to noise - other people's noise drives them up the wall, but to manage this, they make lots of noise. Various bird calls, whistles, grunts, screeches, simultaneously pissing each other off whilst trying desperately to make the other stop. Anticipation, as both boys wait for the threats and insults to begin, and vie to get in there first. Anxiety and anger as neither likes being treated in this way, understandably.

I've been reading Ross Greene's Lost in School (which is brilliant by the way, I will be reviewing it in the near future), and trying to work on my Plan B skills with both boys, trying to encourage mutual respect and fewer fight club moments. So far I'm having no success, and I suspect I'm not alone.

I have often asked online for advice as to how to get to a point where I can manage both boys at the same time, replies are usually from parents in the same boat, I have yet to find any advice that actually works (although it's early days with Lost in School, which I will persevere with), apart from keeping them separate, which is easier said than done when I'm alone with both whilst my husband works, and both, despite having their own rooms and space, seem to want to be together all the time.

Even the Cygnet Siblings course that I attended a few weeks ago, which I had great hopes for, barely acknowledged that autistic children very often have autistic siblings, and instead focused solely on the effects of autism on neurotypical siblings, and sadly when parents were talking about the issues with their other children, advice tended to follow the line that these children were copying the behaviour of the autistic child. Whilst this is possible, the genetic risk factor shouldn't be ignored, and I strongly feel that there must be some collection of advice available for those of us who have largely neurodiverse families.

In an ideal world, what I would like is to produce a list of sibling strategies, both proactive, long term strategies, and some heat of the moment "Aaaargh, what the hell do I do now" strategies.

Thinking on my feet, being inventive and humorous are not things I'm good at, I'm a planner, I like to have methods at hand to adapt to our needs, and this is where you can help.

If you wouldn't mind, and particularly if autistic sibling difficulties affect your family too, it would be great if you could share this post and gather any helpful ideas, book recommendations etc and post them on my FB page (The PDA Soapbox). I really need some fresh ideas, and I'm pretty sure there are others who need the same.

In return, I will collate this information in one handy post, referencing these tips, linking to books and resources. In helping me out here, hopefully I can help you too!

Thank you!